ved in Welsh and
Cornish, the remnants of the tongue of ancient Britain. We know, too,
from the name Eporedia (Yvrea), that this dialect of Celtic must have
spread into Cisalpine Gaul. The latter district may have received its
first Celtic invaders direct from the Danube valley, as M. Alexandre
Bertrand held, but it would be rash to assume that all its invaders came
from that direction. In connection, however, with the history of Celtic
religion it is not the spread of the varying types of Celtic dialect that
is important, but the changes in the civilisation of Gaul and Britain,
which reacted on religious ideas or which introduced new factors into the
religious development of these lands.

The predatory expeditions and wars of conquest of military Celtic tribes
in search for new homes for their superfluous populations brought into
prominence the deities of war, as was the case also with the ancient
Romans, themselves an agricultural and at the same time a predatory race.
The prominence of war in Celtic tribal life at one stage has left us the
names of a large number of deities that were identified with Mars and
Bellona, though all the war-gods were not originally such. In the Roman
calendar there is abundant evidence that Mars was at one time an
agricultural god as well as a god of war. The same, as will be shown
later, was the probable history of some of the Celtic deities, who were
identified in Roman times with Mars and Bellona. Caesar tells us that
Mars had at one time been the chief god of the Gauls, and that in Germany
that was still the case. In Britain, also, we find that there were
several deities identified with Mars, notably Belatucadrus and Cocidius,
and this, too, points in the direction of a development of religion under
military influence. The Gauls appear to have made great strides in
military matters and in material civilisation during the Iron Age. The
culture of the Early Iron Age of Hallstatt had been developed in Gaul on
characteristic lines of its own, resulting in the form now known as the
La Tene or Marnian type. This type derives it name from the striking
specimens of it that were discovered at La Tene on the shore of Lake
Neuchatel, and in the extensive cemeteries of the Marne valley, the
burials of which cover a period of from 350-200 B.C. It was during the
third century B.C. that this characteristic culture of Gaul reached its
zenith, and gave definite shape to the beautiful curved